


Pretty Little Child

by Quitebrilliantindeed



Category: Xenosaga
Genre: Fear, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-06
Updated: 2013-07-06
Packaged: 2017-12-17 21:47:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/872288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quitebrilliantindeed/pseuds/Quitebrilliantindeed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gaignun has always been a touch more attractive than his brothers. It doesn't feel right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pretty Little Child

“You are so lucky,” Jr. suddenly teased. He had been staring at him for no less than a minute, apparently deep in thought about something or other on his face. Junior. It still felt strange to call him by such a name—Gaignun’s tongue always began to slip into an ‘r’ and a ‘u’ before he caught himself. “I mean—whoa. I guess you lucked out with your mutations…” He seemed to have caught Gaignun’s somewhat puzzled look and wiped the smile from his face. “…Or something.” he amended, trying to sound nonchalant. Perhaps he was trying a bit _too_ hard to do just that.

“What do you mean by that?” Gaignun asked the question coolly, continuing to sort through the proverbial stacks of paperwork that glowed upon his hovering touchscreen, but in truth, it made him rather turbulent. He knew exactly what Jr. had meant—but he chose detachment for the sake of delaying the ensuing conversation. The distracted thoughts of funding and construction dancing through his head didn’t help any—the final stages of approval for the construction of “The Kukai Foundation” were approaching, and with all the meetings to attend and budgets to handle, he could hardly spare time for some strange fascination of Jr’s…

“I mean you’re pretty,” Jr’s tone was lighthearted, and he stuck his tongue out for a brief second. “Prettier than me and Albedo, you know?”

Gaignun ran a hand through his hair and down his flushing face. He caught a glimpse of himself in the window across the room as he did this and flinched. “Jr…” He muttered. “Thank you, but that’s subjective.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Yes, it is.”

“But _everyone_ tells you it!” He protested, now rising to his feet and making a show out of it. “And everyone _has_ told you that too…” Jr’s boundless energy then slowed, coming to a sudden halt-- “Even when we were younger.”

Gaignun suppressed a sigh—it was true enough. The handlers at the Yuriev Institute had commented—if rather uncomfortably—on his appearance. He remembered enjoying it at first—being praised for his smooth skin, dark locks, and a perfectly-shaped face—the attention had been delightful, filling the certain void left in his heart by his perpetual status as a ‘plus-one.’ If Rubedo and Albedo had something he couldn’t share in, why shouldn’t he have this one little thing for himself? It felt sick and sweet at the same time, both selfish and deserved. However, the former soon overtook the latter, as the compliments quickly wore on him, and eventually, even unsettled him. He decided then that it had indeed been selfish of him to enjoy such a thing. He much rather just be close to the twins.

That wasn’t a subject Gaignun liked to dwell on very much, especially now. The memory sickened him more and more with every passing day.

“That’s very sweet of you,” Gaignun shuddered a little, shaking off the unpleasantness that had descended on him. “I’ll have to record this and play it back at you whenever you tease me.”

“…” His older brother didn’t answer.

“Jr?”

“Yeah?”

“You drifted off there on me there…” Gaignun tutted as he nimbly opened another computer screen. Work suddenly seemed infinitely more appealing.

“I just…” Gaignun frowned. He may have been hung up on the subject, but Jr. had no reason to be. “It’s a bit odd, isn’t it? That you’re a little bit more… pleasing than the rest of us.”

“Jr…” Gaignun’s fingers slid down from the floating screen as an uneasiness swelled between them.

“Wouldn’t it have saved our old man a lot of trouble to make us all look exactly the same? Save for the hair…” Jr. absently fingered his own locks, as if to emphasize the point.

A stifled laugh broke from his lips. Why the hell was this making him so uncomfortable? Why the hell was it making _Jr_. feel the same way? It wasn’t jealousy, no, but… “It was probably just a last minute thing. Of course you and Albedo would look the same, Citrine was Citrine, and I… well, I was the last of us,” Gaignun tried not to cringe—it still felt awful, to refer to himself and his six-hundred-sixty-eight siblings as little more than lab rats. “So perhaps it was a last-minute development? I suppose I ‘lucked out’ and got to be the sole recipient.” He forced a crooked smile.

Jr. mirrored his expression. The smile looked only more distorted on his usually pleasant face. “Yeah. Yeah, of course.” He paused. “This was a silly topic anyway.”

“Yeah.” Gaignun agreed quietly, his work well-past forgotten at this point.

“Sorry for bothering you. I really have my own things to be taking care of, don’t I?”

“Mm.”

“I guess I’ll go…” Jr. began to shuffle for the door, keeping his eye to the ground and his shoulders hunched.

“Yes…” Gaignun replied, a touch too late. When he lifted his head to look, his brother had already left the room.

A lingering sense of sick curiosity still bubbled dangerously within him. Hardly aware of his own limbs, he rose from his chair to face the window behind him—or rather, his reflection in the window.

He was attractive—he knew that—but never had it unsettled him so much, not even during his days at the Institute. He crossed his arms and glared into his reflection, studying the blurred image with brutal care, willing his skin to be a little less smooth, his hair a little less shiny, and his nose a little less sharp.

Something about it didn’t feel right. Nothing about it felt right.

You didn’t just make a person ever-so-slightly more attractive than their kin, not if you didn’t care. And Gaignun, above anyone, knew that his father had most certainly not cared. So what was it then—vanity? After seeing his image 668 times in both male and female variations, had Yuriev grown so bored as to make himself just a little prettier—just enough to stroke that ego a little more?

No. That didn’t feel right either. It was a sinister thought, yes, but this somehow felt worse.

When he looked at that reflection, he truly felt like a _doll_. How could this body be his own—it was someone else’s plaything, and his own soul was but a convenient filler for an empty vessel.

In the end, Gaignun found the whole thing to be going nowhere or at least nowhere productive. A shiver passed over his body, but he cut the festering thought off, and forced himself to cast it to the shadows. With a heavy sigh, he returned to funding and construction, the sick notion all but forgotten.

**Author's Note:**

> It seems to be a universal fact among Xenosaga fans that Gaignun is very pretty. If he's just a bit prettier than all his brothers, and he was intended to be a vessel for his father... well, it makes you wonder if Yuriev took the time to make one of his 'children' just a little more attractive...


End file.
